Sinclair Lewis Quotes

A radical is one of whom people say ''He goes too far.'' A conservative, on the other hand, is one who ''doesn't go far enough.'' Then there is the reactionary, ''one who doesn't go at all.'' All these terms are more or less objectionable, wherefore we have

We started out as far to the left as we could.

I do not believe that our place is at the comfortable mid-point between the extremes of left and right.

The immediate present belongs to the extremists, but the future belongs to the moderates.

A dog is a liberal... He wants to please everybody.

RADICALISM, n. The conservatism of to-morrow injected into the affairs of to-day.

All this marked them as vaguely liberal, although their ideas would never congeal into anything like a firm ideology; in this, too, they were American.

I'm not a centrist, and there's nothing about me that's centrist. I never have been.

I do not believe that politics in the long run is about individuals. It is about ideas.

I'm considered a new Democrat, which would be considered moderate.

I am on the right wing of the middle of the road and with a strong radical bias.

I believe I am more conservative than Bob Dole; I believe I am more committed to fundamentally changing American government than Bob Dole.

Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.

Liberalism is but childishness, which is easily brought to reason; but revolution is a force, and one must know how to use it.

Most unfortunately, none among us arise as reformers save that they depart from moderation into extremism, and the call cannot succeed with extremism. The Wahhabis undertook reform, and their sect would be good were it not for their extremism and excess. What need is there for their call that the tomb of the Prophet be destroyed? Or their assertion that all other Muslims are infidels? Or that they must be extirpated?

The best position the government could assume would be that of moderation between opposite extremes of Ultra-Toryism and Radicalism

I think Republicans make a mistake when they seek to be 'Democrat light.'

I don't know what Russell Moore's politics really are. I don't know if he is a closet liberal or if he is a conservative.

To be conservative at 20 is heartless and to be a liberal at 60 is plain idiocy.

McCarthy generally, as an individual, was a liberal. He was, in economic philosophy and a lot of other things, extremely liberal.

Not to have a correct political point of view is like having no soul.

One must choose between God and Man, and all "radicals" and "progressives", from the mildest liberal to the most extreme anarchist, have in effect chosen Man.

The believing mind reaches its perihelion in the so-called Liberals. They believe in each and every quack who sets up his booth inthe fairgrounds, including the Communists. The Communists have some talents too, but they always fall short of believing in the Liberals.

Everyone is a liberal until they have something to conserve. Then they become a conservative.

I have found a certain type calls himself a Liberal...Now I always thought I was a Liberal. I came up terribly surprised one time when I found out that I was a Right-Wing Conservative Extremist, when I listened to everybody's point of view that I ever met, and then decided how I should feel. But this so-called new Liberal group, Jesus, they never listen to your point of view.